I had the privilege of being on Stuff (and their in-print papers) on Friday on the above topic. Most responses are positive and people read the statistics and understand the clear need.
However … writing on this topic always loses me a few subscribers … and this morning I even received an email describing me as a “race traitor.”
The text is below … please have a close read. This is a set of problems NZ must solve and we are nowhere near making significant progress.
OPINION: As controversy swirls around the Treaty of Waitangi, the failure of the Crown in keys areas is having a profound effect. One area is education. In education Māori have been divided from the rest since the Treaty was signed.
The latest NCEA results show a 12% decline in level 1 pass rates. Two explanations are given: that the schools that have ditched level 1 NCEA are lower equity index schools (higher decile); and that the compulsory literacy and numeracy credits – just introduced – are having an impact.
This impact, like many historic changes, will be having a much greater effect on Māori as only 57.7% of Māori participants passed reading (compared to 78.8% of European students); 55.1% of Maori passed writing (74% European) and 38.1% of Maori passed numeracy (63% European). A student cannot be awarded level 1 without all three.
In 1840 there were 80,000 Maori and 2000 non-Māori in our nation. By 1896 the Māori population was 42,000 and the European 700,000. The Maori population stayed below 100,000 until 1945 (then 6% of our head count). Underachievement in education of a small portion of the country has a marginal economic impact.
Māori remained less than 10% of our nation until 1983, at which point trends changed significantly. In 2024 the Māori population topped 900,000 and by 2043 will be approximately 21%, with a further 12% being Pasifika – another ethnicity struggling in our education system.
Without properly educating our Māori children from this point productivity will remain low, we will have to keep importing qualified people, and the tax and welfare implications are catastrophic. To grow well, all ethnicities need the highest quality education.
Some are currently invoking the ghost of William Hobson. I have no doubt Governor Hobson would be rapidly spinning if he knew the comparative position of Māori in education, health and employment in 2025. From 1840 the Crown accepted the responsibility to treat Māori as full citizens. A modern understanding of the rights of the child was adopted by the UN in 1989 and New Zealand became a full signatory in 1993. Key points include:
All children having access to education and healthcare.
Children being free from discrimination.
Children having the full opportunity to develop their abilities.
Children being free from economic exploitation and discriminatory conflicts with the law.
That there can, and should be, special provisions for minority groups.
There is ample evidence in education that we are negligent towards Māori. In 2023 28.3% of Māori school leavers did not have even level 1 NCEA (14% for Europeans). Only 17.6% of Māori are currently leaving with University Entrance. For Europeans it is 41.2%.
Only 63.6% of Māori youth stay at school until they are 17 (non-Māori 79%).
In term 3 of 2024, 51% of students fully attended school. For Māori it was a tragic 37.5%.
Post-school, in Auckland, 23.5% of Māori under 24 years old are not in employment, education or training (NEETS). It is 12.2% for the general population. Many schools now say that “success is how you choose to define it”. Just define it as leaving school early and owning a good couch.
Our lowest-achieving schools are disproportionately Māori, however it is not just between schools that the education outcome gaps occur. Most schools have differentials between Māori and Europeans across all academic levels.
My conclusion is that we take the differentials between ethnicities as natural rather than a function of upbringing, previous education or deeply ingrained expectations. For many, Māori are still those tactile kids who can play rugby, love practical learning and are future “stop-go” experts.
It is too easy to hold the high schools fully responsible. We are failing to address the fact that Māori children are arriving at primary school behind and never catching up.
The responsibility of the Crown for the provision of education for Māori must be to see that Māori outcomes match those of Europeans. Every Māori child born from this day forward must have the same opportunity as any other child. Anything less is not only failure but an ongoing breach of the Crown’s Treaty obligations and our responsibilities under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In education the Government is acting mainly through a change in curriculum with “structural” as the buzzword. It is like trying to knock down a charging elephant by throwing marshmallows. They are tinkering and ignoring the true situation. Our system will continue to track down and Erica Stanford will leave no tangible legacy until:
parenting is massively promoted, supported and resourced;
attendance is fully addressed;
school and teacher quality is trending up quickly;
the massive Ministry of Education (still more than 4000 employees) is completely repurposed and its purpose statement, “we shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes”, becomes true;
and every required action is taken to bring Māori outcomes to the level of European achievement.
The best education we can offer for every Māori child is not “privilege” – it is a right and a Crown obligation.
They said the adverse effects of the proposed restaurant on the environment would be more than minor on the approach to Wānaka, the landscape character and the visual amenity values of Mt Iron.
This is just crazy – both that McDonalds had to spend a year fighting to get resource consent, let alone that they didn’t get it.
They argued there was a large roundabout at the site with five arms, and development happening around it.
There was also existing resource consent for a service station development, nine worker-accommodation units and 13 houses next to the site.
I know that roundabout. It’s a great location for a McDonalds.
The Privileges Committee has considered a question of privilege concerning a member’s denial that he made a particular statement in debate, and recommends that Tākuta Ferris be required to apologise for deliberately misleading the House.
The irony is he was accusing other MPs of being liars, but in fact the record has shown Ferris himself lied.
We asked Mr Ferris to provide written comment about the question of privilege, which he has done. We then invited Mr Ferris to a hearing of evidence to elucidate some of those comments. Mr Ferris declined our invitation.
Off memory it is rare for an MP to decline to appear before the Privileges Committee to explain their version of events, and allow questioning.
Making an inaccurate statement in the House is likely to involve a single temporal moment in the charged atmosphere of the debating chamber, and it is appropriate that inadvertent misleading without intent should not be judged too harshly. Denying that a misleading statement was made may be quite different—it may involve a sustained course of action and judgement, rather than a single moment.
This is a key difference.
We reiterate that the House operates on the basis that members are assumed to behave truthfully and honourably. The House must be able to rely on the truthfulness of its members in order to operate. In deliberately misleading the House, Mr Ferris has impeded the House in its ability to do so. For this reason, we find that Mr Ferris committed a contempt.
Note that the Privileges Committee has nine members – National (3), Labour (2), ACT 1, NZ First 1, Greens 1 and TPM 1. The report doesn’t have a minority view, so presumably the decision was unanimous or by consensus.
In the six years from 2017 to 2023, the number of people employed in the core public service* grew 34 percent, to 63,117 full-time equivalent employees. Total salary costs for this core public service workforce grew a staggering 72 percent, to about $6.1 billion a year, over the same period.
We simply do not have sufficient taxpayers to support that kind of growth. We do not have sufficient economic growth to support that level of public spending.
Staggering – a 72% increase in public sector salary costs.
Keeping it simple is also being efficient and respectful with the use of taxpayers’ money. Taxpayers trust us to use their resources wisely, and we can not, in the fog of daily pressures and challenges, lose sight of that.
Here’s a simple question I would urge you and your staff to ask themselves: if this was my money, would I spend it this way? This is the simple question that I ask myself when I am making funding decisions. It’s what I need you to do and to enforce.
Think of the sharemilker up at the crack of dawn every day whatever the weather. Think of the aged care worker doing their best to give our elderly the care and respect they deserve in their twilight years. Think of the bus driver. The taxi driver. The truck driver.
All these people want – and deserve – to know that their money is being spent in a way that delivers the services they need in the best way possible. They want results. They don’t want flow charts, frameworks, roadmaps, or bubble diagrams.
Plain speaking.
Coming back into government, it seems to me that you are getting weighed down with things that don’t have much to do with your core responsibilities and where everything becomes a priority.
Your core role is to serve the government of the day and focus on the basics, and the Act should reflect this.
Less DEI!
And the language you use needs to be fit for the person who is your customer. As a lawyer in private practice, I learned to explain legal terminology in everyday language.
If I talked to customers about the ‘mens rea’ and the ‘actus reus’ required for an offence to have been committed, I would have shown them I know some ‘legal’ Latin, and they might have been impressed. But really, I would just be showing them that I did not understand the first rule of communication -which is to be understood.
You and your staff need to think about your customers. When you are talking to or writing to your customers, think how it sounds to them.
Is it gobbledygook?
Is it a word salad?
Is it arrogant and lacking in empathy?
Is it inherently distancing you from the people who are paying your salary?
My suggestion is to leave the acronyms at the door.
Keep your superior language skills for those who will appreciate them.
Be appropriate. And remember… it’s no use if you can understand you, but your audience can not. Speak to people as you would like to be spoken to and show respect. And, no matter what, be genuine.
Implicit in this is use the language the public are most likely to understand – English. That doesn’t mean never use te reo – it just means never use it exclusively without English also. 18 months ago the Reserve Bank did a press release which said:
Today Te Tai Ōhanga, Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga and Te Pūtea Matua are publishing a joint paper that provides an assessment of the key drivers of rents in New Zealand.
I doubt 1% of New Zealanders would know who the hell they are referring to, without using Google. You should not be forcing 99% of the population to use a translator just to understand a press release.
I’d like to see the public service embrace the potential of AI.
I look forward to seeing a centralised, AI-powered data platform that enables real-time sharing of insights and collaboration between agencies like health, education and housing. It will be able to identify connections that may not be immediately obvious.
Excellent idea.
As the Prime Minister has made clear, a culture of saying No is not acceptable. Your challenge is to inspire your staff, your team, to say “Yes”.
Yes to the licence.
Yes to the permit.
Yes to considering trialling AI tutors for kids.
Yes to delivering a government app that provides the sort of service that the commercial world delivers.
Yes to allowing NZ businesses to innovate and be flexible.
The full public results of the Better Wellington Curia poll are here. In this final part I want to focus on rates and related issues.
We asked support for a general proposition:
Wellington City Council should have smaller rates increases in future
That had 87% in favour and just 5% opposed.
We then asked more specifically:
Council rate increases should not exceed the rate of inflation
This had a still massive 77% in favour and just 9% opposed. 60% of those who voted for Tory Whanau in 2022 agreed with it and only 21% disagreed.
Net support by party vote was:
National +89%
TPM +77%
NZ First +70%
Labour +65%
ACT +62%
Greens +52%
A potential policy was polled on:
Would you support or oppose a policy that if the Council wishes to increase rates by more than inflation, any large projects they wish to fund must be approved by residents in a referendum?
This had 53% support and 29% opposition for net support of +24%. It was supported by all genders and age groups, and all five general ward voters,
Net support by party vote was:
NZ First +66%
National +49%
ACT +36%
Labour +27%
TPM +8%
Greens +5%
So net support from voters of all six parliamentary parties.
We also asked agreement on
Party politics doesn’t belong around the council table
This had 64% agreement and only 14% disagreement.
Two final questions on housing, being:
Do you believe social housing is primarily the responsibility of the city council or the central government?
Wellington City Council is funded by property owners through rates. Do you believe property owners should pay to provide social housing?
69% of Wellingtonians said that social housing is primarily the responsibility of the central government with only 11% saying the city council.
Only 24% support property owners paying rates to provide social housing with 57% opposed. Net support by party vote was:
TPM +46%
Greens +0%
Labour -32%
NZ First -51%
National -56%
ACT -80%
So overall what Wellingtonians want is:
Better performance from the Mayor and Council
A focus on fixing the basics
Smaller rate increases, at or under the rate of inflation
Helen Clark and Nanaia Mahuta see the Cook Islands issue very differently (not the first time they’ve had a very big disagreement) pic.twitter.com/JQAZ8DLNEG
A remarkable tweet from Labour’s former Foreign Affairs Minister backing the right of the Cook Islands to sign any agreement they want with China without even consulting New Zealand (which they are part pot the Realm Of, and have citizenship of).
Helen Clark correctly points out that the 2001 agreement (and she was the PM then) requires consultation. So we have Mahuta saying the Cook Islands is right to ignore an agreement made with New Zealand.
Thank goodness Mahuta is no longer Foreign Minister. She seems to be an advocate against New Zealand, rather than for it.
Ruth Money MNZM has been appointed New Zealand’s Chief Victims Advisor, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says.
“Ms Money is already an outspoken and energetic victims advocate with a proven track record of driving change. She has been a full-time volunteer since 2012 following a successful business career, and has extensive experience across the many and varied components of the justice system. She is committed to the view that society can and must do better for victims.
Ruth is a great person, and the best person you could imagine for this role. She has been a staunch advocate for victims for so many years, and to have her empowered with this role within Government is an excellent thing.
ACT leader David Seymour has defended a letter sharing “concerns” about police treatment of an Auckland eye surgeon being questioned over his wife’s death. …
On Sunday, the NZ Herald reported that Seymour wrote to Auckland District Commander Karyn Malthus in 2022, saying he’d been asked by Polkinghorne to share some concerns about his treatment. …
Seymour told Stuff the letter was sent before any charges against Polkinghorne were laid.
“An electorate MP’s job is to serve their constituents. I had a constituent contact me with concerns over the way they felt they had been treated by police. As is made clear in the letter, the intention was to pass on the constituent’s concerns to police,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
“Police responded assuring good practice was being followed and there was no further correspondence on the matter. This all took place before any charges were being pursued or reporting on the case had taken place.”
Seymour was not a Minister in 2022, so this isn’t a case of the Executive trying to interfere with a Police investigation. However I still think it was ill advised. This was a homicide investigation and MPs should not advocate on behalf of individuals. It is quite proper to do so to government agencies, but not to the Police. A sensible course of action would be to assist them with a complaint to the IPCA, or assist them with getting a lawyer. But not to write on their behalf if it is an ongoing investigation.
Curia did a poll for Better Wellington of a 1,000 Wellingtonians in January 2025. The results of Part 1 are here.
The first question asked was:
Overall would you say that things in Wellington today are generally headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track?
Only 27% of Wellingtonians said Wellington is headed in the right direction with 54% saying it is off on the wrong track.
There was no difference by gender, but a large difference by age. Net direction is -10% for under 40s and -54% for over 60s. So all age groups are negative, but older Wellingtonians much more so.
The breakdown by ward (caution small sample sizes) for net direction was:
Māori +18%
Lambton -5%
Eastern -29%
Northern -35%
Southern -37%
Onslow/Western -50%
So Lambton ward is mildly negative, the other four general wards strongly negative and those in the Māori ward were positive.
Also of interest is that of those who voted for Tory Whanau in 2022, only 37% said Wellington is heading in the right direction and 46% the wrong direction.
The breakdown of net direction by party vote was:
TPM -5%
Greens -9%
Labour -27%
NZ First -38%
National -41%
ACT -60%
So voters from all six parliamentary parties think the net direction for Wellington is negative. TPM and Green voters only mildly so, but Labour and other voters strongly so.
Then we asked more specifically about Council satisfaction:
How do you rate the overall performance of the Wellington City Council over the last year. Would you say it was very poor, poor, average, good or very good?
Only 15% of Wellingtonians said the Council is performing above average and 51% below average for a net rating of -36%.
Net performance by ward was:
Māori +1%
Southern -24%
Lambton -26%
Northern -39%
Onslow/Western -48%
Eastern -55%
Of those who voted first preference for Whanau is 2022, 31% said WCC was doing a good job and 28% a poor job.
Labour voters are dissatisfied with the Council with only 12% saying it is doing a good job and 48% a poor job.
The final question in Part 1 was on the Mayor’s performance:
How do you rate the overall performance of Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau over the last year. Would you say it was very poor, poor, average, good or very good?
17% of Wellingtonians rate the Mayor’s performance as above average and 46% below average.
Under 40s give Whanau a net rating of -10% and over 60s a net rating of -64%.
Net performance for the Mayor by ward is:
Māori +2%
Lambton -13%
Northern -33%
Onslow/Western -34%
Southern -41%
Eastern -43%
Labour voters are again unhappy with only 16% saying the Mayor had done a good job and 42% a poor job.
In Parts 2 and 3 I will detail some of the responses to issues and policies.
The New Zealand government says the Cook Islands has failed to properly consult it on proposed agreements its Prime Minister Mark Brown will be signing in China this week.
Brown has now left for China without further consultation, RNZ understands.
In a statement this afternoon a spokesperson for foreign affairs minister Winston Peters said they could confirm that Brown and Peters spoke over the phone on Friday.
“The Deputy Prime Minister, in the phone call and in writing within hours of the call, repeated to the Prime Minister a months-old request that the government of the Cooks Islands share with New Zealand the contents of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) and other agreements that Prime Minister Brown intends to sign in China, in line with the requirement for consultation in the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration between New Zealand and the Cook Islands,” the spokesperson said.
New Zealand is meant to be responsible for foreign policy and affairs for the Cook Islands. Now if they want to go from being part of the Realm of New Zealand to being a fully sovereign and independent country, that is their right. But there should be a consequence for that, which is they can start funding their own government, rather than have NZ taxpayers pay for around a quarter of their government.
Just to show you how, in the hiring process, New Zealand gives much more weight to identity than to merit, I enclose part of the job description for the position of Chief Operating Officer of Wellington Water, the water utility for the Greater Wellington region (Wellington, a lovely city, is the capital of New Zealand). The document was sent to me by a Kiwi who, of course, wishes to remain anonymous (you are not allowed to point out things like this for fear of losing your job or being demoted).
At the end of the whole job description (I have it on pdf), there’s a “person specification”, which gives both the “essential” and the “desired” qualities of the person to be hired. Note that experience in working in such a water system (“three waters” delivery refers to drinking water, storm water, and sewage) or having established a network in the water sector are only “desired” qualities (including a bachelor’s degree).
But the essential qualities, part of which I’ve outlined in red, include “an understanding and knowledge of te ao Maori, tikanga and the principles relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.
Amazing isn’t it. This is a job for the COO of a major water company and actual experience with water systems is only rated desirable while knowledge of tikanga and te ao Maori is essential!
Whangārei’s fluoridation rebellion is intensifying with the Director-General of Health threatening to potentially pull rank and turn on the switch to add fluoride to the city’s drinking water if the council continues its defiance.
The Councillors seem to have an inflated sense of their own importance. They don’t get to ignore laws passed by Parliament.
Whether or not you agree, Parliament has passed a law that allowed the DG of Health to mandate fluoridation. If you don’t like the law you lobby to change it. You don’t get to ignore it.
In my Patreon (paywalled) I explain why the view that the Treaty of Waitangi is a supreme law that sits above Parliament is wrong, and is an impossibility.
Day 3 was a relatively short 16 kms, starting with some typical bush.
Nice shade from the canopy.
The track here was a lot easier than the first day which was very hard rock.
Lots of birds about.
A rare solid bridge across the river.
The Pororari River was next to the track for much of the day.
Back into fern territory.
Steps down as we hit river level.
Was very tempted to jump in for a swim.
In this section you basically go into a sort of cave formed by huge boulders wedging together, and there is a small set of steps out of the rocks.
Beautiful view of the river, near the end.
The final stretch.
Fellow trampers at the pub at Punakaiki.
After 55 kms of tramping on blisters, the answer to the question “Shall we walk down the road to see the Pancake Rocks” should be “Hell no” but masochism is under-rated so I said “yeah” and we walked around 1 km down the road to see Pancake Rocks, which were awesome.
A great view of the coast from Pancake Rocks.
As you can see the boot didn’t do so well, and it resulted in constant squeezing of the foot as I walked.
I ended up with a total of six blisters on my sole, my big toe and the side of the foot. The more blisters I got, the more I speeded up so I would be able to get the boots off at the end of the day!
Was still an amazing experience with great company and scenery, but next Great Walk will see me with different boots!
